Students learn English; teachers how to teach it

Students and teachers are learning together in this class in their local library. DP
Lessons at mobile home park's library

By Josh White | Correspondent

onlineathens.com: On any given Tuesday or Thursday, kids and grown-ups crowd into the library at Pinewood Estates North mobile home park to learn a new skill - how to speak English.

Their teachers are learning something new, too - how to teach English.

A grant from the American Library Association could help them both.

"I know it's frustrating," volunteer teacher David Di Bella told his students. "English is very frustrating."

English as a second language (ESL) classes are offered twice a week at the little 3-year-old library.

"It's grown tremendously," said Kathy Ames, the director of the Athens-Clarke County Regional Library. "It's a fulfillment of a dream for me."

The Pinewoods library was created to serve the residents of Pinewood Estates, a largely Hispanic neighborhood on the Athens-Clarke border with Madison County.

Around 135 people a day visit the library to check out books, get career or health advice, or attend computer, art, and language classes, said Miguel Vicente, the library coordinator.

Since March 2005, the library - a single-wide trailer - has become a central part of the community.

Staff members issued twice as many library cards to people in 2007 as they did in 2005. Ames also estimates the library logged fewer than 3,000 visits in 2005, but that number grew to 31,662 visits in 2007.

The library has only two official employees, though, and the ESL program depends on volunteer teachers, many of them completely untrained in how to teach.
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.